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On May 20 2012 23:07 Tobberoth wrote:
People who don't understand "builds" need to either get farther in the game, or play a different class. There's a ridiculous amount of flexibility with the wizard for example, and which of the tons of skills/runes you choose to run (and what gear you have to complement it) completely changes how you play. It's not about maximum efficiency, but more how you want to play and what works in a given situation.
you dont build-up your character. you are given skills and stats. whatever skill you choose to use if upto you yes, but you had zero input on getting there aside from ... getting experience points.
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While I admit the game has it's flaws, it's still hard to argue it's a better release than most games currently being put out. I do have to say, ABSOLUTELY a set of skills is a build. Perhaps the nay-sayers are looking at it on a very shallow level. It's not just the spells you are using, but how you use gear to compliment, in parallel with your passives.
On May 20 2012 21:50 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2012 21:46 Klockan3 wrote:On May 20 2012 21:35 micronesia wrote:
It's honestly been confusing my why everyone is talking about diablo 3 'builds'. I mean WHAT? A build is which abilities you choose to use at a given moment? Its like how people say that they play a specific race in starcraft, they can change their race at any time but in general people stick to a specific one. Like in diablo 3 you don't use that many different skillsetups, if you use ~10 out of ~100000 feasible ones you are still unique in what you do. I think the point is that it's not actually a build. It's a combination. You don't actually build your character's skill set with an outcome in mind. It's done ahead of time for you, and you just unlock different (often times useless) skills. Most of your levels and skill unlocks can't be put towards your ideal skill combination. "Which build combination do you use" should be the question asked in D3 in regards to the 6 character class skills.
You have to be joking me. I most certainly do set out with an outcome in mind. My current build is slightly unique compared to what I have seen most wizards run. I am a melee wizard that stacks crit chance and life, I then base my character around critting to heal. It works great, I'm level 59 almost finished with hell. Perhaps you are letting your negative bias of the game impact the way you play. I'd suggest trying to objectively look at the release.
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On May 21 2012 04:02 xLethargicax wrote:While I admit the game has it's flaws, it's still hard to argue it's a better release than most games currently being put out. I do have to say, ABSOLUTELY a set of skills is a build. Perhaps the nay-sayers are looking at it on a very shallow level. It's not just the spells you are using, but how you use gear to compliment, in parallel with your passives. Show nested quote +On May 20 2012 21:50 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2012 21:46 Klockan3 wrote:On May 20 2012 21:35 micronesia wrote:
It's honestly been confusing my why everyone is talking about diablo 3 'builds'. I mean WHAT? A build is which abilities you choose to use at a given moment? Its like how people say that they play a specific race in starcraft, they can change their race at any time but in general people stick to a specific one. Like in diablo 3 you don't use that many different skillsetups, if you use ~10 out of ~100000 feasible ones you are still unique in what you do. I think the point is that it's not actually a build. It's a combination. You don't actually build your character's skill set with an outcome in mind. It's done ahead of time for you, and you just unlock different (often times useless) skills. Most of your levels and skill unlocks can't be put towards your ideal skill combination. "Which build combination do you use" should be the question asked in D3 in regards to the 6 character class skills. You have to be joking me. I most certainly do set out with an outcome in mind. My current build is slightly unique compared to what I have seen most wizards run. I am a melee wizard that stacks crit chance and life, I then base my character around critting to heal. It works great, I'm level 59 almost finished with hell. Perhaps you are letting your negative bias of the game impact the way you play. I'd suggest trying to objectively look at the release.
This is how I want to play my wizard too! I guess I just want to play melee wizard, but since you've found a way to make it work, I'm definitely trying that.
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United States24667 Posts
The only thing that makes it even close to a 'build' in the traditional sense is that you can tailor your equipment towards the abilities you want to use. I don't agree that 'ABSOLUTELY a set of skills is a build' unless you take build to mean 'a set of skills' which is what most people seem to do, but not what it used to mean.
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On May 20 2012 23:00 Backpack wrote:The new item system will be the downfall of D3. Legendary/Set items are awful compared to random blues/yellows. There's no point in farming the cool stuff if your blue drop has double the stats. The stats themselves have been simplified so much that items will never be cool. Every upgrade is either more health or more damage. They got rid of all the cool modifiers that made D2 uniques, unique. http://diablo3markets.incgamers.com/blog/comments/legendary-set-items-immenseley-undertuned-high-end-weapons-trivializedThis link was not working 100% for me but it does a much more in-depth explanation of why nobody will care enough about items to actually farm and/or buy items for more than a few cents. edit: The rest of the game is great, I think they did a great job with the gameplay (monks not included) but it just won't last. Umm this is a good thing.. If unique/epic items are the best, everyone will end up with the same cookie cutter setups like in LoD. Its boring, bland and predictable. This is why Classic D2 and D1 are so good - everyone has different items, and with the various affix sets you have all the fun of combinatorics that premade uniques tend to eliminate.
There is also the player created "lore" of especially rare items which have retardedly good affix or item color cominations, run for ridiculous prices on the market and whose owners are admired and hated. if you look at D2 classic trading forums youll see this grassroots content creation dynamic.
unique items destroy all this.
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On May 21 2012 04:29 storkfan wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2012 23:00 Backpack wrote:The new item system will be the downfall of D3. Legendary/Set items are awful compared to random blues/yellows. There's no point in farming the cool stuff if your blue drop has double the stats. The stats themselves have been simplified so much that items will never be cool. Every upgrade is either more health or more damage. They got rid of all the cool modifiers that made D2 uniques, unique. http://diablo3markets.incgamers.com/blog/comments/legendary-set-items-immenseley-undertuned-high-end-weapons-trivializedThis link was not working 100% for me but it does a much more in-depth explanation of why nobody will care enough about items to actually farm and/or buy items for more than a few cents. edit: The rest of the game is great, I think they did a great job with the gameplay (monks not included) but it just won't last. Umm this is a good thing.. If unique/epic items are the best, everyone will end up with the same cookie cutter setups like in LoD. Its boring, bland and predictable. This is why Classic D2 and D1 are so good - everyone has different items, and with the various affix sets you have all the fun of combinatorics that premade uniques tend to eliminate. There is also the player created "lore" of especially rare items which have retardedly good affix or item color cominations, run for ridiculous prices on the market and whose owners are admired and hated. if you look at D2 classic trading forums youll see this grassroots content creation dynamic. unique items destroy all this.
You are the 1%. This I am 100% sure of.
Uniques should not be insanely powerfull but they should at least stand out, serve a purpose. Thats what makes them unique. Right now the uniques in D3 dont really do that.
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There's two big things that really stand out for me. Three. Let's go with three.
1. The story is awful. Personally I think the story and writing is one of the most important things in a game that's supposed to have a story to begin with. I feel the same way I felt when I used to play warcraft and I heard about Cataclysm: "O good, instead of building off of lore you had...you went for "SUDDENLY A DRAGON WILL APPEAR!!!!" (that doesn't mean that Deathwing wasn't part of the lore WoW-people, just that there was a lot of other shit that could have been built off of first, and he could have been introduced without "hey look at our new stuff guys") When I think about this game, aside from the fact that the story itself is shit, I have the same feeling of..."okay, I am attempting, really hard here, and it's not working". And i get the feeling that it was made to need some sort of shitty follow-up to really follow through. To sum that up, the story is bad, and it doesn't even feel like it stands alone as a working piece.
2. When I played D2 at ANY and EVERY level I could feel a difference between playing a poisonmancer and a bonemancer and a skeleton master. Playing a Frenzy barb or a WW barb weren't the same experience, even though for the large part they actually were. The felt different. They looked different. And again, at every level they felt different. You didn't have to get to hell to find that out. You didn't have to get to hell to visually feel different either. While D3 gives you different visuals, generally it feels like your play variance is more "Do I want to kite?" "Do I want to hit shit in the face?" and not much further than that. Or rather, a scale of "How much various CC do I want to use?" Beyond that a lot of "options" feel a lot less like options and a lot more like "do I want to use something inferior or something better?" Poisonmancers might look a little off, and even play a little scary in a few parts, but there's not much debate that they were actually pretty badass for a while; similar to a throwing barbarian. Even if it sounded sub-par, a lot of things were just amazing, and again, different from eachother. I don't get that feeling from D3.
3. I will forwarn this by saying it might be my disappointment with the game. It might be nostalgia. It might be that I just don't enjoy grinding or too much scripted stuff. I feel that the replay value of the game is non-existent. I got to a point where it was MF Baal/xx or stop playing and it was stop playing because effectively you're mashing keys; you aren't playing anymore. But I'm already there with D3 and I just started. Hopefully I can refund.
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On May 20 2012 23:00 Backpack wrote:The new item system will be the downfall of D3. Legendary/Set items are awful compared to random blues/yellows. There's no point in farming the cool stuff if your blue drop has double the stats. The stats themselves have been simplified so much that items will never be cool. Every upgrade is either more health or more damage. They got rid of all the cool modifiers that made D2 uniques, unique. http://diablo3markets.incgamers.com/blog/comments/legendary-set-items-immenseley-undertuned-high-end-weapons-trivializedThis link was not working 100% for me but it does a much more in-depth explanation of why nobody will care enough about items to actually farm and/or buy items for more than a few cents. edit: The rest of the game is great, I think they did a great job with the gameplay (monks not included) but it just won't last.
D2 was kinda like that as well, aside from like a dozen uniques (Dracul's Grasp, SoJ, BK, Shako, Vipermagi, HoZ, Mara's, Homunculus, sorc orbs, Arachnid Mesh, War Travs), a few of sets (Death's Disguise, Orphan's Call, Cow King's, Trangs), and several runewords (Enigma, CtA, HotO, Spirit, the ladder-only aura runewords) out of all the ones they had, the best gear is still magics and rares. And actually, you'd settle for a few of those uniques because you couldn't get the better magics or rares. But anyway, the good "legendary" stuff is not so abundant.
I just read the article, and it seems like it's complaining that there aren't enough useless mods available for items. I'm not sure what the carrot-on-a-stick analogy was supposed to be about, but it'd certainly apply if D3 was like D2 where you farmed endlessly and 90% of the stuff you ended up with was vendor trash, because of the massive amounts of useless mods you can roll on items. Is this guy saying that he wants to spend more time farming for good items? 'Cause what ended up happening on D2 is that there are more bots than people actually playing, since farming is the most mindnumbingly boring and skilless thing you can do in a game.
I dunno, "replay value", I guess. If you didn't have to spend endless hours farming decent gear for pvp, what else would you be playing for when you've beaten every difficulty?
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On May 21 2012 04:07 micronesia wrote:
The only thing that makes it even close to a 'build' in the traditional sense is that you can tailor your equipment towards the abilities you want to use. I don't agree that 'ABSOLUTELY a set of skills is a build' unless you take build to mean 'a set of skills' which is what most people seem to do, but not what it used to mean.
haha, such nonsensical abuse of semantics.
It's exactly the same thing as having infinite respecs.
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United States24667 Posts
On May 21 2012 05:38 UniversalSnip wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2012 04:07 micronesia wrote:
The only thing that makes it even close to a 'build' in the traditional sense is that you can tailor your equipment towards the abilities you want to use. I don't agree that 'ABSOLUTELY a set of skills is a build' unless you take build to mean 'a set of skills' which is what most people seem to do, but not what it used to mean. haha, such nonsensical abuse of semantics. It's exactly the same thing as having infinite respecs.
I feel like my 'hotkey' example was lost on you (or you just didn't read it).
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On May 21 2012 06:02 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2012 05:38 UniversalSnip wrote:On May 21 2012 04:07 micronesia wrote:
The only thing that makes it even close to a 'build' in the traditional sense is that you can tailor your equipment towards the abilities you want to use. I don't agree that 'ABSOLUTELY a set of skills is a build' unless you take build to mean 'a set of skills' which is what most people seem to do, but not what it used to mean. haha, such nonsensical abuse of semantics. It's exactly the same thing as having infinite respecs. I feel like my 'hotkey' example was lost on you (or you just didn't read it).
I didn't read, but it doesn't really change anything. There really is no difference between introducing the ability to redivide your points as you wish into d2 and what we have now.
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I am also hearing a lot of complaining about how "useless" some of the skills/runes are. Are you kidding me? Look at Diablo 2, half of the spells on that game were completely useless and were never utilized in PvP or PvM. I'm also hearing a lot of people say there are a limited number of efficient builds on D3. The exact same thing was true, if not even moreso, on D2. Everybody played the same builds and there was hardly even any differences between peoples items. Everybody had the same charms, runewords, and uniques.
How are so many of you jumping to judge this game when it has been out for four days?! Talking about limitations of builds, how bad the loot system is, how ruined the game is. Diablo 2 was out for 12 years and had numerous patches. You have to wait for a community to build around a game and define how to game functions. I bet most people in this thread whining about the item system on D3 haven't even had a set item yet.
mind-boggling.
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On May 21 2012 08:59 xLethargicax wrote:
I am also hearing a lot of complaining about how "useless" some of the skills/runes are. Are you kidding me? Look at Diablo 2, half of the spells on that game were completely useless and were never utilized in PvP or PvM. I'm also hearing a lot of people say there are a limited number of efficient builds on D3. The exact same thing was true, if not even moreso, on D2. Everybody played the same builds and there was hardly even any differences between peoples items. Everybody had the same charms, runewords, and uniques.
How are so many of you jumping to judge this game when it has been out for four days?! Talking about limitations of builds, how bad the loot system is, how ruined the game is. Diablo 2 was out for 12 years and had numerous patches. You have to wait for a community to build around a game and define how to game functions. I bet most people in this thread whining about the item system on D3 haven't even had a set item yet.
mind-boggling.
yeah the blizzard version. but the bar has been raised since then. third party mods like Median XL and Hell Unleashed have achieved immaculate balance where nearly every skill of every class is end-game viable. and im sorry but blizzards work here isnt good enough. it just doesnt cut it. their quality standard isnt what the amateurs have set already.
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On May 21 2012 04:43 DaCruise wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2012 04:29 storkfan wrote:On May 20 2012 23:00 Backpack wrote:The new item system will be the downfall of D3. Legendary/Set items are awful compared to random blues/yellows. There's no point in farming the cool stuff if your blue drop has double the stats. The stats themselves have been simplified so much that items will never be cool. Every upgrade is either more health or more damage. They got rid of all the cool modifiers that made D2 uniques, unique. http://diablo3markets.incgamers.com/blog/comments/legendary-set-items-immenseley-undertuned-high-end-weapons-trivializedThis link was not working 100% for me but it does a much more in-depth explanation of why nobody will care enough about items to actually farm and/or buy items for more than a few cents. edit: The rest of the game is great, I think they did a great job with the gameplay (monks not included) but it just won't last. Umm this is a good thing.. If unique/epic items are the best, everyone will end up with the same cookie cutter setups like in LoD. Its boring, bland and predictable. This is why Classic D2 and D1 are so good - everyone has different items, and with the various affix sets you have all the fun of combinatorics that premade uniques tend to eliminate. There is also the player created "lore" of especially rare items which have retardedly good affix or item color cominations, run for ridiculous prices on the market and whose owners are admired and hated. if you look at D2 classic trading forums youll see this grassroots content creation dynamic. unique items destroy all this. You are the 1%. This I am 100% sure of. Uniques should not be insanely powerfull but they should at least stand out, serve a purpose. Thats what makes them unique. Right now the uniques in D3 dont really do that. except uniques are NOT UNIQUE. they are standard cookie cutter items that everyone and their grandma uses. the rare items that i described are ACTUAL unique relics, one of a kind and with power so uncommon the common player can only dream of ever having them. and the sad thing about D2 LoD is these are never worth it. Well Blizz learned and in D3 they are, and this is a good thing from any reasonable perspective.
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On May 20 2012 22:59 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2012 22:26 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2012 21:58 Klockan3 wrote:On May 20 2012 21:50 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2012 21:46 Klockan3 wrote:On May 20 2012 21:35 micronesia wrote:
It's honestly been confusing my why everyone is talking about diablo 3 'builds'. I mean WHAT? A build is which abilities you choose to use at a given moment? Its like how people say that they play a specific race in starcraft, they can change their race at any time but in general people stick to a specific one. Like in diablo 3 you don't use that many different skillsetups, if you use ~10 out of ~100000 feasible ones you are still unique in what you do. I think the point is that it's not actually a build. It's a combination. You don't actually build your character's skill set with an outcome in mind. It's done ahead of time for you, and you just unlock different (often times useless) skills. Most of your levels and skill unlocks can't be put towards your ideal skill combination. "Which build combination do you use" should be the question asked in D3 in regards to the 6 character class skills. Just because it is easy to rebuild your character doesn't mean that it isn't a build. I just think it's a misnomer to call everyone's combination of six skills a "build" (although, quite frankly, it's a word that everyone can relate to from previous games and almost get the same idea across, so I'm not exactly going to run a petition against using the word). Everyone's "build" is going to be the same at the end of the day: At your current level, reflect on all your skills and see which combination works best. If you're level 60, you have every skill, and you didn't need to build your character any differently than anyone else (actually, you couldn't). Your build will be the same as everyone else's (i.e. unlocking everything) but your final combination of skills may be different. Now that being said, I think it'd be interesting if people started working with the fact that they were stuck with auto-unlocks (which will come in time) and actually proposing their own combination changes every step of the way (e.g. at level 24 I use this combination, at level 32 I'm going to use this combination, and at level 40 I'm going to use this combination, etc.). That's pretty much the best outline a "build" can become in the D3 world, based on the fact that you can't actually diverge from other people in unlocking skill paths, in my opinion. It seems to me to be the same thing as 'hotkey'. When a technical word gets popular in gaming, it gets attached to more and more loosely related things. Hotkeys originally were when you did control+1, control+2, etc, to assign certain units or a building to a number (hence 'hot'). Shortcut keys were things like m for building a marine or k to upgrade high templar energy (or whatever it was). By SC2, shortcut keys and hotkeys were both being referred to as hotkeys... by users AND by blizzard. The word 'build' originally had to do with (you guessed it) 'building' something. Now, a build is anything that is vaguely similar to what a build used to be (in this case choosing which abilities you want to use at a given time).
I agree, and I like your analogy. I suppose the etymology is going to evolve to suit the particular game, but I think we need to call a spade a spade if we're going to scrutinize over the success of playstyles and specifics. We're clearly not setting up builds every level of the way in D3, the same way we set them up in D2. As you and I both agree, it's really picking combinations from the same pool that everyone always has. And then, of course, you can customize with gear, but that's rather superficial in my opinion. So if that's what a D3 "build" is, all right. But I prefer the D2 way, which is the way that many other RPGs use (you're forced to actually make skill/ spell decisions and tech them up, rather than getting everything for free).
On May 21 2012 08:59 xLethargicax wrote:
I am also hearing a lot of complaining about how "useless" some of the skills/runes are. Are you kidding me? Look at Diablo 2, half of the spells on that game were completely useless and were never utilized in PvP or PvM.
And if we felt that was the case in D2, we could ignore those "useless" skills and focus more on upgrading the spells we actually want each level. Something that cannot be done in D3. It's like (in terms of D2), wanting to make a blizzard sorc, but being forced to get exactly one skill point in every fire, lightning, and ice spell. So then I select blizzard and now I've *built* my sorc around blizzard? Hardly.
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On May 21 2012 09:45 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
And if we felt that was the case in D2, we could ignore those "useless" skills and focus more on upgrading the spells we actually want each level. Something that cannot be done in D3. It's like (in terms of D2), wanting to make a blizzard sorc, but being forced to get exactly one skill point in every fire, lightning, and ice spell. So then I select blizzard and now I've *built* my sorc around blizzard? Hardly.
So...basically it's semantics about wanting to be a "Blizzard" sorc, and having some OCD disorder about having access to those skills despite not using them?
If you could get 20 points in every skill in D2, would you be crying too?
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United States24667 Posts
On May 21 2012 11:15 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2012 09:45 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
And if we felt that was the case in D2, we could ignore those "useless" skills and focus more on upgrading the spells we actually want each level. Something that cannot be done in D3. It's like (in terms of D2), wanting to make a blizzard sorc, but being forced to get exactly one skill point in every fire, lightning, and ice spell. So then I select blizzard and now I've *built* my sorc around blizzard? Hardly. So...basically it's semantics about wanting to be a "Blizzard" sorc, and having some OCD disorder about having access to those skills despite not using them? If you could get 20 points in every skill in D2, would you be crying too?
No it's not semantics and it's not trivial.
And I didn't see crying either. Why are you trying to hard to be disliked by the person you are disagreeing with?
Someone says something that not everyone agrees with (probably because they don't understand it) --> "OMG STOP CRYING"
Sorry for going off a bit but that annoys me. This may be the internet but I hope for more when reading on TL.
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On May 21 2012 11:15 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2012 09:45 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
And if we felt that was the case in D2, we could ignore those "useless" skills and focus more on upgrading the spells we actually want each level. Something that cannot be done in D3. It's like (in terms of D2), wanting to make a blizzard sorc, but being forced to get exactly one skill point in every fire, lightning, and ice spell. So then I select blizzard and now I've *built* my sorc around blizzard? Hardly. So...basically it's semantics about wanting to be a "Blizzard" sorc, and having some OCD disorder about having access to those skills despite not using them?
If you're actually going to ignore the posts that I, micronesia, and other people have written about what we think constitutes "building" unique builds, and instead throw out some ridiculously immature ad hominem about OCD, I don't really have anything else to add. But if you actually care about learning the opposing perspective, feel free to read the thread or play Diablo 2 (or any other RPG game that makes you choose your tech path instead of unlocking everything for you; there are plenty).
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I dunno, I think it's a fair point about the builds. It means that there is little to no value in having two wizard characters. One character would just be strictly better or worse than the other.
I wouldn't be surprised if they add some more forced decisions in the expansion to make up for it or something. Would have to be only in the later difficulties. Or not. Who knows.
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EPT
